


A Breeze, Through Bars

by orphan_account



Category: Aldnoah.Zero (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 17:43:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8854921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Slaine may believe he deserves to die, but six months ago Inaho promised Asseylum they would save Slaine from himself.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucathia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucathia/gifts).



The building itself is on the smallest of a group of military island bases. It appears as most government buildings: weathered, nearing obsolescence. A convenient place for governments to store inconvenient necessities. From the barracks Inaho shares with Yuki on the neighboring peninsula, the trip is short enough. 

Inaho’s daily commute is over two bridges, through one tunnel, and many layers of clearance checks to a long green hall where, embedded in the wall by one of many similar cell doors, is one with a new access panel. Inaho demonstrates his authorization with a dual-retinal scan and clearance code - a random twenty-nine character string confirmed by his prosthetic’s secured data-relay each day - and everything once the door opens is a matter of classified record. 

Inaho steps inside. The door closes heavily, sealing behind him. It has been 136 days since the assignment reports began.

 

The salt compounds in the air are products of the nearby sea and dried tears. Inaho does not want to know this, but the mechanism grafted to his optical nerve takes note. The prisoner watches shadows of seagulls on a small bright patch of cell wall. Inaho can hear the mechanism whir and feels its gears shift with special clarity as it focuses on how their captive’s vitals and environment change from day to day to day. The archived catalogue of recorded minutiae are themselves only hint of an otherwise disavowed existence. The reports do not include his name.

"Slaine," Inaho says. He addresses the prisoner in this way on Seylum's behalf. It is an act of tenderness neither yet finds comfortable. It is habit or ritual. "Today is chess." 

Inaho places a paper cup on the single rounded table which is bolted to the floor by the mattress, beneath the small barred window. The liquid in the cup is pulpy and reddish-pink, bitter grapefruit masking the flavor of the nutrient compound the military police corrections facility resorts to use when a prisoner fails, or refuses, to finish compulsory meals.

Slaine pulls his eyes from the bright patch on the wall and blinks. "War games." He smiles with his mouth only. Inaho’s eye makes note of a spike in Slaine’s pulse and the wavering timbre of his voice. "Aren't you tired of this yet, Orange?”

“Very,” Inaho says. His sigh is gentle. He knows they are both tired. He folds his arms over his chest and waits. 

Slaine is still unused to Inaho’s silences, which say many things. He watches the set of Inaho’s jaw soften, and the mechanism again tells Inaho what he does not have any desire to know: Slaine recognizes that is Inaho’s smile, and it frustrates him. Slaine rises from the floor like an old man. He crosses to the table and drinks the contents of the cup. Inaho’s eye makes note of the time in the day’s report. 

Together, they take their seats on opposite sides of the holo-board. For a while they divide territory. They trade pieces. They play. 

They are well-matched.

“I don’t deserve such a gift.” The sacrificed white knight, the companionship Inaho’s daily observation provides, the distraction of a simple game from his sense of guilt and shame, the persistence of his own existence - Slaine means many things.

“You aren’t the one who decides what you deserve, or how the undeserving are treated.” Inaho hears the shortness in his own voice and sits back. He takes a breath, and moves a rook to reinforce his queen’s position. 

Slaine, playing black, aggresses with his final bishop. He is losing and knows it. Inaho declares check and Slaine moves out of it. Again Inaho declares check, and Slaine moves out of it. Inaho's eye ensures that during the game their report is amended to reflect Slaine’s tenacious play. This is progress. Inaho considers the board.

When the decision was made to keep Slaine alive despite his treason, his own desperate self-loathing, and the public demand for vengeance, Inaho had served with his sister and Marito in securing the committee. To her opposition, Asseylum had taken Klancain’s hand in hers and said that they could not allow the conflict to claim even one more victim. It has been 114 days since Slaine Troyard was officially executed. 

Slaine looks at the white queen. He looks at her remaining knight and the rooks behind her. He looks at the queen.  
“You don’t have the right to reject this any more than I do,” Slaine says.  
“No,” Inaho agrees. He has always understood the weight of her kindness. Inaho again pushes Slaine into check, but does not declare. He says, “She wants you to live.”

For a long time, Slaine looks at the bright patch of the wall. The breeze from the sea stirs the hairs on the back of his neck. A gull cackles outside.

“She wants you to want to live, if you can,” Inaho corrects himself softly. 

“If I can!" Slaine makes a sound that is not so very different from the gull’s call. In that moment he reminds Inaho of a breaking wave, curling in on himself in a rush of salt-water and noise. “If I can want to.”

“You can,” Inaho says. 

Slaine knocks the the black king onto its side and stands, turning toward the window as the holographic board dissipates. He wraps his fingers around the bars there, and presses his face against his white knuckles. “All I do is disappoint her,” he tells the gulls outside. The rustle of their wings as they take off en masse nearly drowns out his words.

“So stop,” Inaho says. “You know how.” 

“If I can,” Slaine says, pulling his hands back from the bars. He turns away from the clouds and looks back at Inaho. "I want to."

Inaho is surprised by feeling his own relief, his need to fulfil his promise not only on Seylum's behalf. He says, "She believes we can. Trust her."

Slaine sighs. He is resigned. He nods.

Inaho’s prosthetic eye sends a simple update for when the unifier of Earth and Mars' Versian Empire has a moment away from the obligation to her people, when she is able to ask after these parts of herself: _He has decided to live._


End file.
